"Humans are no different than any other creature. There are no better and no worse. They are not above and they are not below. They're no different than that tree. They are not superior to that tree. They have evolved a forebrain. They have evolved a cortex. That does not make them superior to any other living creature! And if you think they're superior, God damn it, look at their behavior! They have not earned the title superior to other creatures. If you look at the behavior of human beings towards each other, toward other creatures, toward the earth if you look at what humans have done over the human history, I do not put them one step above any other living creature. Do they have a responsibility to perpetuate and to grow consciousness? No more so than the squirrels, or the trees, or the flowers. But it raises another question: Is intelligence a good survival factor? Now that was a pretty hard statement but look at the behavior. I mean when you look at the Voyager picture taken of earth from six million miles, it's no more than a bright star up there. It's a little life boat. Now when you see that little birth star out there from millions of miles, and you know there are forty thousand nuclear weapons on that little life boat out there. That's humanity. That's what intelligence does for you. The animals didn't do that. The supreme intelligent beings of earth did that. Only intelligence would do that. So you see, I'm raising an important question on species trajectory. What does intelligence, and or maybe a "superior" consciousness mean? Now, I'm going to give you something I don't believe: I don't think we have a responsibility to increase consciousness. I don't see that. You're getting into a cosmic ethic and you're saying the cosmos is better if it has more consciousness and it is linked tighter in terms of information and networking, which consciousness does. But I don't know if that is a desired goal. But since the cosmos is doing it, then fine. But I don't know if we have a responsibility to do that. We are the mechanism by which the cosmos does it. Teilhard de Chardin doesn't say we should be doing that. He's says it happens ... He wants to arrive."

My kids are starting to notice I'm a little different from the other dads. "Why don't you have a straight job like everyone else?" they asked me the other day. I told them this story: In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, "Look at me...I'm tall, and I'm straight, and I'm handsome. Look at you...you're all crooked and bent over. No one wants to look at you." And they grew up in that forest together. And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, "Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest." So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper. And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day.

- Tom Waits

"Jesus! Did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me?""Life is a joke and death is the punchline."

"Reality, at first glance, is a simple thing: the television speaking to you now is real. Your body sunk into that chair in the approach to midnight, a clock ticking at the threshold of awareness. All the endless detail of a solid and material world surrounding you. These things exist. They can be measured with a yardstick, a voltammeter, a weighing scale. These things are real. Then there's the mind, half-focused on the TV, the settee, the clock. This ghostly knot of memory, idea and feeling that we call ourself also exists, though not within the measurable world our science may describe. Consciousness is unquantifiable, a ghost in the machine, barely considered real at all, though in a sense this flickering mosaic of awareness is the only true reality that we can ever know. The Here-and-Now demands attention, is more present to us. We dismiss the inner world of our ideas as less important, although most of our immediate physical reality originated only in the mind. The TV, sofa, clock and room, the whole civilisation that contains them once were nothing save ideas. Material existence is entirely founded on a phantom realm of mind, whose nature and geography are unexplored. Before the Age of Reason was announced, humanity had polished strategies for interacting with the world of the imaginary and invisible: complicated magic-systems; sprawling pantheons of gods and spirits, images and names with which we labelled powerful inner forces so that we might better understand them. Intellect, Emotion and Unconscious Thought were made divinities or demons so that we, like Faust, might better know them; deal with them; become them. Ancient cultures did not worship idols. Their god-statues represented ideal states which, when meditated constantly upon, one might aspire to. Science proves there never was a mermaid, blue-skinned Krishna or a virgin birth in physical reality. Yet thought is real, and the domain of thought is the one place where gods inarguably ezdst, wielding tremendous power. If Aphrodite were a myth and Love only a concept, then would that negate the crimes and kindnesses and songs done in Love's name? If Christ were only ever fiction, a divine Idea, would this invalidate the social change inspired by that idea, make holy wars less terrible, or human betterment less real, less sacred? The world of ideas is in certain senses deeper, truer than reality; this solid television less significant than the Idea of television. Ideas, unlike solid structures, do not perish. They remain immortal, immaterial and everywhere, like all Divine things. Ideas are a golden, savage landscape that we wander unaware, without a map. Be careful: in the last analysis, reality may be exactly what we think it is."

The effect of society is not only to funnel fictions into our consciousness, but also to prevent awareness of reality… Every society by its own practice of living and by the mode of relatedness, of feeling and perceiving, develops a system of categories which determines the form of awareness. This system works, as it were, like a socially conditioned filter… Experiences which cannot be filtered through remain outside of awareness; that is, they remain unconscious.

Erich Fromm: Zen Buddhism and psychoanalysis

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Most people think of time as a way to describe change. At one moment, matter has a certain arrangement; a moment later, it has another. The concept of multiverses suggests an alternative view. If parallel universe contain all possible arrangements of matter, then time is simply a way to put those universes into a sequence. The universe themselves are statistic; change is an illusion, albeit an interesting one.- Max Tegmark

Charles Bukowski, Notes From a Dirty Old Man:"An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way."

Chuck Palahniuk, JS Onlinen haastattelu:"All I do is track a profane route to something (I hope) profound. Like swimming a river of shit for a kiss."

Neil Gaiman, online-essee kirjoittamisesta:"You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it."

Grant Morrison, popimagen haastattelu: "I'd say to myself or whoever I was with, 'It'll look good in the biography.' and then I'd go ahead and do whatever daft thing it was - like taking acid on the sacred mesa or doing the bungee-jump, getting the haircut, dancing with the stranger, talking to the crowd - whatever I was 'scared' of mostly, or fancied doing, or never dared before, I'd try it on the basis that it would make for a more interesting read one day."

Terence McKenna, Non-Ordinary States Through Vision Plants:"It is now very clear that techniques of machine-human interfacing, pharmacology of the synthetic variety, all kinds of manipulative techniques, all kinds of data storage, imaging and retrieval techinques, all of this is coalescing toward the potential of a truly demonic or angelic kind of self-imaging of our culture. And the people who are on the demonic side are fully aware of this and hurrying full-tilt forward with their plans to capture everyone as a 100% believing consumer inside some kind of beige furnished fascism that won't even raise a ripple. The shamanic response in this situation - I think is - to PUSH THE ART PEDAL THROUGH THE FLOOR."

Excerpts from INTOXICATION THE 'FOURTH DRIVE' by Dr. Ronald K. Siegel. Article in the September/October 1990 HUMANIST magazine. (Later made into a book.) wrote:

History shows that we have always used drugs. In every age, in every part of this planet, people have pursued intoxication with plant drugs, alcohol, and other mind-altering substances...Almost every species of animal has engaged in the natural pursuit of intoxicants. This behavior has so much force and persistence that it functions like a drive, just like our drives of hunger, thirst and sex. This "fourth drive" is a natural part of biology, creating the irrepressible demand for drugs. In a sense, the war on drugs is a war against ourselves, a denial of our very nature...

Maynard James Keenan:"If you look at the cycles of the moon, it starts as a thin crescent and then gradually waxes until it becomes full; then it gradually wanes back into another crescent and then it is gone. The moon reflects sunlight like humans reflect information. We wax and wane and when we become full moons, our egos are full. We think we have this knowledge when in fact, the information we have is pure. And how it reflects or shines off of us, is something we take credit for as though the moon could take credit for its brightness when, in fact, it is only reflecting light from the sun. We have to understand that we are ego-less just as the moon is without light. It and we are simply reflectors. The ego is not responsible for the information. It can reflect the information in creative ways, but the information itself is pure."

Mumon Ekai [1183-1260]:"Zen's foundation is the work of the Buddha. The way is through the mind, out beyond the gateless gate.That which comes in through the gate, cannot be eternal for that which is formed by causation, by causation will pass away.Such remarks raise the waves in a windless sea or gash unblemished skin.Words and reason are limited and their use is as foolish as trying to hit the moon with a stick or itching your shoe.Reality transcends conception.If anyone advances resolutely in his practice of Zen, not even the demon-king Nata can stop him.The patriarchs of India and China would beg for their lives at his coming.If he falters, he will be like a man who watches a horse gallop past a narrow window.In the blink of an eye, it has come and gone.

The great Way is gatelessThere are a thousand roadsOnce the barrier is clearedStroll through all heaven and earth."

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"- Douglas Adams

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they go by."- Douglas Adams

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"Religion easily has the best bullshit story of all time. Think about it. Religion has convinced people that there's an invisible man...living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn't want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money."- George Carlin

"Jesus! Did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me?""Life is a joke and death is the punchline."

Robert Anton Wilson:"We can all see how other people's BS (belief system or bullshit) makes them blind and "stupid" at times, but we find it very hard to notice how our own BS is doing the same to us. This is what anthropologists call 'acculturalization.' Following Gurdjieff, I prefer to call it hypnosis... Every politician knows how to induce hypnosis, and very damned few peple on the whole planet know how to de-hypnotize themselves. The world is not governed by facts or logic. It is governed by BS."

"But I recall (around 1991) reading PIHKAL and Archaic Revival, and seeing three couragous people, Sasha and Ann Shulgin and Terence McKenna, who were willing to put their true identities in the public eye as supporters of the personal, social, and scientific benefits of the psychedelics. This inspired me; both to enter the field in a professional way, and to be willing to be public about this support. So far there have been no negative legal or personal consequences, though of course I analyze the possible risks carefully and take precautions.

If a few research neuropharmacologists decide they can do serious research with psychedelics because of some of us are willing to "go public", or a few more individuals support MAPS or Heffter or Erowid or the the drug reform groups, or they decide they can tell their friends or associates that these experiences can be useful and should be better understood, I feel the exposure is worthwhile."

CharlieBigPpotato wrote:"But I recall (around 1991) reading PIHKAL and Archaic Revival, and seeing three couragous people, Sasha and Ann Shulgin and Terence McKenna, who were willing to put their true identities in the public eye as supporters of the personal, social, and scientific benefits of the psychedelics...

"The basic characteristic of perinatal experiences and their central focus are the problems of biological birth, physical pain and agony, aging, disease and decrepitude, and dying and death. Inevitably, the shattering encounter with these critical aspects of human existence and the deep realization of the frailty and impermanence of man as a biological creature is accompanied by an agonizing existentialist crisis. The individual comes to realize, through these experiences, that no matter what he does in his life, he cannot escape the inevitable; he will have to leave this world bereft of everything that he has accumulated and achieved and to which he has been emotionally attached. The similarity between birth and death – the startling realization that the beginning of life is the same as its end – is the major philosophical issue that accompanies the perinatal experiences."

"In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the mind, there are no limits." --John C. Lilly

David Bohm:"We probed into the nature of space and time, and of the universal, both with regard to external nature and with regard to mind. But then, we went on to consider the general disorder and confusion that pervades the consciousness of mankind. It is here that I encountered what I feel to be Krishnamurti's major discovery. What he was seriously proposing is that all this disorder, which is the root cause of such widespread sorrow and misery, and which prevents human beings from properly working together, has its root in the fact that we are ignorant of the general nature of our own processes of thought. Or to put it differently it may be said that we do not see what is actually happening, when we are engaged in the activity of thinking."

"If I am right in saying that thought is the ultimate origin or source, it follows that if we don't do anything about thought, we won't get anywhere. We may momentarily relieve the population problem, the ecological problem, and so on, but they will come back in another way."

"...The man who is after ultimate truth forgoes social life and its constraints to devote himself to his own progress and destiny. When he looks back at the social world, he sees it from a distance, as something devoid of reality, and the discovery of the self is for him coterminous, not with salvation in the Christian sense, but with liberation from the fetters of life as commonly experienced in this world..."Louis Dumont: Essays on individualism (1986).

"I have not embraced pantheism or even panpsychism as a philosophy; rather, I have given up on philosophies entirely. I live amid wonders, which I file under the law of general semantics which states that no map can ever show "all" the territory. In fact, I think we should ban the word "all" from ordinary speech and restrict it solely to pure mathematics."

Indeed. But what is sane? Especially here in "our own country" in this doomstruck era of Nixon.We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the Sixties. Uppers aregoing out of style. This was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling"conciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities thatwere lying in wait for all the people who took him too seriously. After West Point and thePriesthood, LSD must have seemed entirely logical to him . . . but there is not much satisfactionin knowing that he blew it very badiy for himself, because he took too many others down withhim.

Not that they didn't deserve it: No doubt they all Got What Was Coming To Them. All thosepathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding fot threebucks a hit. But their failure is ours, too.

What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped tocreate . . . a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essentialold-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody or at least someforce is tending that Light at the end of the tunnel.

This is the same cruel and paradoxically benevolent bullshit has kept the CatholicChurch going for so many centuries. It is also the military ethic . . . a blind faith insome higher and wiser "authority." The Pope, The General, The Prime Minister . . . all theway up to "God."

"Jesus! Did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me?""Life is a joke and death is the punchline."

"Sanity may be described as the conscientious denial of reality. That is to say, the facts of the situation (apart from a few which are judged to be harmless) have no emotional impact to a sane mind.

For example, it is a salient feature of our position that we are in a state of total uncertainty. Possibly the universe started with a "big bang" a few aeons ago, or perhaps something even more incredible happened. In any case, there is no reason known to us why everything should not stop existing at any moment. I realize that to my sane readers I shall appear to be making an empty academic point. That is precisely what is so remarkable about sanity.

The sane person prides himself on his ability to be unaffected by important facts, and interested in unimportant ones. He refers to this as having a sense of perspective, or keeping things "in proportion". "

Terence McKenna, Riding Range With Marshall McLuhan:"The medium is the message, means that the medium is the thing which is making the difference. Every discussion you ever hear since the 60s about TV, is it good, is it bad, terrible, wonderful, always the discussion hinges around what’s on TV. People say, “well, television is terrible, it just shows violence”, and then somebody else says, “No, television is wonderful, those nature shows and news from far away, and masterpiece theater”. This is a stupid argument. What McLuhan meant by the media is the message, is he meant that it doesn’t matter what you put on TV, TV is TV, it has an intrinsic nature, and whether you’re showing National Geographic specials or slasher movies, TV will do what it does. It has certain qualities, just like driving a car or skiing, certain muscles are going to be exercised, perceptual systems enhanced, others suppressed. And it’s very hard for us to understand this, because we have accepted this media so thoroughly into our life, that in fact it is shaping our values systems in ways which are very hard for us to measure or even detect.I mean, television, for example, it’s a drug, it has a series of measurable physiological parameters that are as intrinsically its signature as the parameters of heroin are its signature. You sit somebody down in front of a TV set, and turn it on, 20 minutes later, come back, sample their blood pressure, their eye movement rate, blood is pooling in their rear end, their breathing takes on a certain quality. The stare reflex sets in, I mean, they are thoroughly zoned on a drug, and when you think about the fact that the average American watches 6 and a half hours of television a day, imagine if a drug had been introduced in 1948, that we all spent 6 and a half hours per day on average watching."

The suicide is the ultimate victory over the body, because the body's natural instincts will force you to try and survive, no matter what, while the spirit and hugr (mind, "soul") always seek to return to the gods. The suicide is also very attractive because it allows me to demonstrate the will to remove the effete, and to give room for the young and healthy, even if the effete is me -- and naturally at one point I will become effete too, like we all will.- Varg Vikernes @ http://www.metalcrypt.com/pages/intervi ... ?intid=170

"The seven dwarfs were each on different little trips. Happy was into grass and grass alone... Happy, that's all he did. Sleepy was into reds. Grumpy. Too much speed. Sneezy was a full blown coke freak. Doc was a connection. Dopey was into everything. Any old orifice will do for Dopey. He's always got his arm out and his leg up. And then, the one we always forget, because he was, Bashful. Bashful didn't use drugs. He was paranoid on his own. Didn't need any help on that ladder."

"Jesus! Did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me?""Life is a joke and death is the punchline."